TNT Home, the home delivery arm of TNT Logistics UK, has expanded its business with furniture marketing and design specialist, Scan-Thors (UK), the exclusive supplier to Debenhams retail stores. From July, TNT Home will undertake the home delivery of Scan-Thors’ cabinet furniture, in addition to the upholstery that it has been delivering throughout the UK since January this year.
Read MoreThe Royal Mail is planning to open post offices at WH Smith stores.
Under the partnership deal proposal, WH Smith will integrate post offices into their retail stores. Post Office programme director Byron Roberts said: “This partnership between two trusted organisations is good news for customers and will enable us to both safeguard and enhance their Post Office services in the future.
“WH Smith Retail’s huge experience and knowledge will ensure that Post Office customers continue to receive a high standard of service.”
Read MoreUnited Parcel Service Inc. and the US Postal Service reached agreement on a deal that will put mail on planes of the package-delivery company and could improve the post office’s reliability. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter said. Terms of the arrangement call for UPS to begin flying mail for the Postal Service on Saturday, in what could generate revenue of more than USD100 million a year for UPS, the report said.
Read MoreIan Duncan, 45, chief financial officer and senior vice-president of the nuclear design and technology group Westinghouse, is to join Royal Mail as finance director. Reporting to chief executive Adam Crozier, Mr Duncan will be a member of Royal Mail’s main board and takes up his new position on September 1. He spent three years as an auditor with the chartered accountants Deloitte and Touche, before joining investment bankers Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and then British Nuclear Fuels, which first acquired and then sold Westinghouse.
Read MoreAs the Royal Mail faces up to its worst industrial crisis for years and the very real prospect of a damaging strike, rival companies such as TNT, DHL and Business Post will be aware of an opportunity.
Such companies have increasingly “cherry picked” the Royal Mail’s business – a trend that was given a fillip on 1 January when the Royal Mail’s letters monopoly was finally removed.
The state company’s competitors had already been creaming off the bulk mailing business used by large financial companies, utilities and government departments. Under a gradual deregulation process, rivals had been allowed to handle batches of 4,000 items and more since 2002. Under a so-called “access” agreement, private sector competitors collect the post from the organisations concerned, then distribute it to regional centres where it is then handed over to Royal Mail offices to be taken “the final mile”. The state-owned organisation receives 13p per item it delivers under the access arrangement, whereas the figure goes up to an average 17p if it supplies the full service.
Since 1 January and “full liberalisation”, Royal Mail’s competitors have been introducing services for smaller batches of mail, eating further into the Royal Mail’s bread-and-butter operations. Business Post’s UK Mail division has recently launched a service for volumes as low as 250 letters a day.
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